John St. Julien is an independent scholar and consultant working and playing out of Lafayette, Louisiana, USA. His interests revolve around grandchildren, curriculum theory, complexity, cognition, social practices, interface design, and information infrastructures. Current projects involve curriculum design and the provision of technical infrastructure for a French language focused collaboration between classrooms in Africa and North America and the creation of a local communications commons initially focusing on providing collaborative online tools and storage to nonprofit organizations.

Response to Stanley: Expanding Complexity: A Meditation

John St. Julien

Abstract

This response offers a meditation on education’s understanding of complexity theories. It explores a way of relating education and complexity theories that is occasioned by a reading of Darren Stanley’s “Complex Responsive Processes: An Alternative Interpretation of Knowledge, Knowing, and Understanding.” In that article Stanley lays out the characteristics of “Complex Responsive Processes” (CRP) as a framework for understanding identity formation and, as such, as a useful analogy for educators interested in “human knowledge and knowing.” This response will suggest that what Dr. Stanley has begun to uncover is more powerful than analogy; it is, in fact, a back door to reconsidering a powerful and still living strand of thought on education in light of the burgeoning power of complex explanations of our shared world.